Welcome to Word Vomit Wednesday! A series of blog posts about random thoughts or a specific topic from current events that I, and sometimes the rest of the Internet, ruminate obsessively about. All thoughts/opinions/experiences are my own (unless otherwise indicated); I don’t claim anything that I write to represent anyone other than myself.

Tonight I went to my parent’s house for dinner with some family friends, ate homemade pie, and watched some fireworks off in the distance while playing Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.” Today is the 4th of July and in the good ol’ U.S. Of A, that means marking our independence as a country. It’s a holiday that I’ve never given much thought to, but just took as a day to hang out with people I love and eat a ton of food. The past couple years has had me, and many other people, starting to think a little more critically about the habits of our country and what it really means to be an American. To be completely honest, this seemingly benign holiday has become a difficult one to celebrate. In the words of one of my favorite people on Twitter, @OhNoSheTwitnt:

“Celebrating Independence Day feels weird now. Like when Facebook sends you a birthday reminder for one of your friends who’s dead.”

Yup. Let’s just take a look at some of the bullshit we’ve been dealing with since June:

At least 8 white supremacists, including admitted pedophile and rapist Nathan Larson are running for federal and state office.

45 called for Samantha Bee, a private citizen, to lose her job.

Scott Pruitt spent $1560 on twelve custom fountain pens.

The Pentagon reported that U.S. Military operations killed 499 civilians in 45’s first year in office.

The EU filed a WTO case in response to 45’s tariffs.

Manafort was sent to jail.

At least 2,300 children have been separated from their families at the border since the implementation of the DOJ’s “zero tolerance” policy.

Baby Concentration Camps

The 45 administration withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council.

45 went from calling the people crossing the border “rapists” to comparing them to vermin “infesting” the country.

A white male terrorist with a history of misogyny and white supremacy murdered five journalists in Maryland.

Surprise! Stephen Miller is America’s Goebbels. *Fun Fact: He’s a Jew! Wow, a Jew who becomes a Nazi. What a neat party trick!

ICE is the new SS

Space Force

More than 600 members of Jeff Session’s church filed a formal complaint accusing him of “child abuse,” “immorality,” and “racial discrimination.” Hey Jeff, you may want to rethink your interpretations of the Bible when your entire Bible study class kicks you out. Just sayin’.

45 rescinded an Obama-era rule meant to protect the Great Lakes and oceans bordering the U.S.

Melania is complicit. Duh.

Despite a signed executive order to keep migrant families together, there is no actual plan to reunite the nearly 2,300 already separated children with their families.

Reported abuse of the kids in the Baby Concentration Camps.

45 plans to meet with U.S. President Putin next month.

The “Unite the Right” organizer received approval to hold a “white civil rights” rally on August 12th on the National Mall.

The White House plans to merge the Education and Labor Departments.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders was kicked out of a restaurant because of her continued ride-or-die chick status with 45.

Naturalized U.S. Citizens are beginning to be targeted and stripped of their citizenship.

Sean Spicer has a new talk show. I’m not going to beat around the bush that he’s been hiding in, but fuck whichever network decided to give him a platform.

Federal debt is expected to exceed the size of the economy within a decade.

The United Nations estimates 18.25 million Americans are living in “extreme poverty.”

The DOJ is drafting a plan to overhaul the U.S. Asylum policy.

Rep. Maxine Waters had to cancel multiple events due to a very serious death threat.

SCOTUS Special Programming:

Fake clinics are allowed to lie to and manipulate women bc free speech and who gives a fuck about women they’re not really people just baby incubators. Thanks SCOTUS!

It’s totally cool to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people if you have a religiously-sanctioned heterosexual agenda.

45’s anti-Muslim rhetoric is being upheld in the form of the Muslim Ban 3.0.

Justice Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court. After the announcement, it came out that Kennedy’s son, Justin, worked at Deutsche Bank for more than a decade and loaned Trump more than $1 billion.

All of that was just ONE MONTH. I’m actually stunned with how we’ve been keeping up as much as we have. I have so many WVW’s that I started and then just wasn't sure if I should post because by the time a week or even a few days passed, whatever I had started writing about seemed almost irrelevant. On top of that, I’ve begun to emotional process the realization that whatever illusion of America I felt like I knew and was real has been completely shattered and I’ve been having a time coming to terms with and understanding what this country is and how it has always been and trying to reconcile how to function in a new, productive, and more informed way. It’s overwhelming as fuck, but our only choice right now is to remain hopeful and channel that hope into action and solutions that get us back on track to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all. This Fourth of July is a clear reminder that we are still not free. We need to fight for our freedom every single day in whatever ways we can.

Today is a complicated day. We’ll probably scorch our food on the grill to commemorate all the bridges we’ve burned to the ground, get drunk on ice-cold brewskis of freedom that do the double-duty of feeding our addiction to lies and illusions while numbing us from feeling the real weight of the dire situation we’re in or the discomfort of actually having to be accountable for the ways in which we’ve been complicit in getting here. We’ll bask in the glow of fireworks, like bombs over Baghdad and every other middle eastern culture we’ve had a hand in destroying while playing the “1812 Overture,” a composition celebrating Russia’s victory over the invasion of Napolean. A tradition that began when it was first played in a Quaker Oats commercial in 1965. Stealing someone else’s anthem via capitalism and claiming it as our own. There’s nothing more American than that.